Making sure our words and actions always reflect these beliefs allow us to create a safe, positive community within our classroom.

Progress Reports

Progress reports were sent home on Wednesday, September 9. Students with grades of 79 and below must bring back their signed reports. If you did not receive your child's report, please email me, and I will send another one.

Grades

In ELA 7, we take three types of grades: 10-point formatives, 100-point formatives, and 100-point summatives.

Formatives that count for 10 points are often checks that teachers have done for completed work or for class activities. Students receive 10 10-points grades for each grading period (progress reports and report cards), resulting in a total of 20 10-point grades.

Formatives that count for 100-points are given after students have received instruction on various skills. They are not given at any particular time, nor are they always announced to the class beforehand. The purpose of a formative is to inform the students and teachers of the instruction and practice still needed on particular skills. Teachers use the students’ performances to design future instruction, and students should use their performances to decide what they need to study and seek help on. Formatives count 40% of the students’ grades. Per RCSD policy, redos are not allowed on formatives.

Summatives are assessments that are given after students have received adequate instruction on the skills they are evaluating. Before every summative, students will be given at least two formatives on the skills assessed. Summatives count 60% of the students’ grades. Per RCSD policy, a student may redo one summative, at the teacher’s discretion, each nine weeks. In order to redo a summative, students must have made a failing grade (59 or below) on the original assessment, AND they must additional instruction OUTSIDE of class time. Redos on summatives are given outside of class time.

Please note that because of the differences in the values and percentages of the different types of grades, some grades affect the overall average more than others. 100-point formatives are worth ten times more than the 10-point grades. Summatives count 60% of the average, while formatives count 40%.

Zero Block

Zero Block is a time for students to get help in their classes and/or make-up work missed in class. From 7:30 a.m. to 7:45 a.m., students can get passes from the cafeteria (car riders) or gym (bus riders) to attend Zero Block. Students are to report to the designated teacher for the morning's Zero Block. The ELA schedule is listed above. While students may want to only attend their English teacher's block for tutoring, we highly encourage them to take advantage of receiving instruction from multiple teachers.

English Binders

By now, each student should have a binder with dividers that is just for English. It is very important that students have a separate binder for English because they receive so much material from having the class every day. In order to help the students organize their papers and keep up with them, I have given them a table of contents at the beginning of each section where students write down the papers that they place in that section. Students are responsible for keeping up with the papers in their binders! I will occasionally give notebook quizzes to make sure that the students are taking care of their binders.

Students can use my example binder to help them keep up with what they should have.

Binders should have 5 tabs: General Info, Reading, Strategies, Current Unit, and Formatives.

Each section has a yellow Table of Contents page to help them keep track of the papers in the section.

Students can use my example binder to help them keep up with what they should have.

Binders should have 5 tabs: General Info, Reading, Strategies, Current Unit, and Formatives.

Each section has a yellow Table of Contents page to help them keep track of the papers in the section.